Speed enforcement on the Strategic Road Network

National Highways is addressing an anomaly in the way some variable speed cameras interact with signs on some A roads and motorways.

I wish to inform the House about a technical anomaly that has impacted how some variable speed cameras interact with signs on a limited number of A-roads and motorways for a number of years. I would like to apologise to all who have been affected.

On 10 September 2025, National Highways informed the Department for Transport of an anomaly on the M5 following a challenge to a speeding offence. Ministers were informed of the anomaly and that National Highways was expanding its analysis to additional sites. On 13 October 2025, Ministers were informed that National Highways had identified this was a national issue, whereby a technical anomaly with the way some variable speed cameras interact with signs was affecting some enforcement on parts of England’s Strategic Road Network.

National Highways identified that on rare occasions, there can be a slight delay between the 2 systems, meaning drivers had not been given sufficient time to respond to a change in speed limit or were detected as speeding when the variable speed limit had already changed. This issue began when cameras were upgraded under the previous government.

This issue has led to incorrect enforcement action being taken in a small number of cases, which I recognise will have been frustrating for those involved. National Highways confirms that this technical anomaly has occurred approximately 2,650 times on the impacted cameras over 4 years since 2021. To place this in context, during the same period, there were approximately 6 million camera activations in total on the affected cameras, meaning fewer than 0.1% of activations were impacted. Not all of the erroneous activations will have resulted in enforcement action, so the number of those actually impacted will be smaller still. These cameras are used on only 0.2% of roads in England.